Ahead of Schedule
by midnightjen
Summary: Mechanical failure woke Raven two years early. Waking Murphy was her own terrible decision.


**a/n: **I've been reading a lot of Murven lately (on repeat) and only just finished catching up on the show in time for the new season. Please let me know what you think, reviews, favourites and follows are always appreciated.

**Day 1**

It wasn't a spare of the moment decision made out of desperation. As much as she'd like to pretend it was. She'd carefully considered her options, weighed the pros and cons of who would be the most help versus who she could stand to be alone with for two fucking years and there hadn't really been a choice.

It had been easy to narrow the choice down to Spacekru. She hated that it was true, but Clarke didn't even get a look in. There were too many bad feelings there that needed to be sorted before they could be the friends they'd once been on their way to becoming. Waking Madi wouldn't help, the young girl would be so far out of her element and this wasn't really something that needed the attention of the Commander.

Her first thought had been to wake Bellamy, though it was a fleeting one. Their friendship had only strengthened during the time on the Ring and she didn't think she'd be too annoyed to be stuck alone with him. But if she woke Bellamy to help her (and keep her company) she'd feel compelled to wake Echo and there just wasn't enough in Monty's dying algae farm to support a third person.

Logically, her best bet was Emori. She'd spent years on the Ring teaching her friend all that she could and Emori was good, in time she might even be great and two years bumming around a ship full of sleeping people would be a great time to learn more. But she'd spent six months sharing quarters with Emori after her break up with Murphy and it had made her cranky (an understatement if she's being honest). She couldn't imagine spending two years alone with her, no matter how much she loved her friend.

If it were anyone else, she doubted Murphy would have even got a look in. He'd been lumped in with the less desirable chores for a reason back on the Ring. But…well…Raven had been stuck alone with him before, he'd seen her at her worst and her best just as she'd seen him and she knew that if she woke him they might go days without seeing each other but she also knew that he would come looking for her when he was bored or if she got lost in her work and he'd draw her out just as he'd done when they'd been stuck the first time on Eligius IV.

He wouldn't be able to help her with the more complicated tasks she'd set herself, but he'd do exactly as she instructed to help with the one thing that needed doing.

And it would give him time to heal before they landed on this new world Monty had found for them. It would give Murphy the time he needed to be at his best and Murphy at his best could survive anything, cockroach that he was.

And he wouldn't hold it against her that the first words she spoke to him after he'd been asleep for a hundred and twenty-three years were, 'If you piss me off, I'm putting you right back to sleep.'

'You know, Sleeping Beauty got woken up with a kiss,' he drawled, pushing up onto the elbow of his good arm to stare up at her with an amused smile and only a slight wince of pain as his wounds stretched.

'You're no Sleeping Beauty,' Raven remarked. 'If you like, I can smack you.'

'You know, Reyes, your bedside manner sucks.'

'Good thing I'm not your nurse then,' she snapped but she moved to help him sit up and helped him raise the shirt of the cryo sleepwear to check on his wounds. The crisp bandages Jackson had placed over his wounds were untouched, no sign that he'd bled through them. Not that he'd really had the time, what with being frozen and all.

'Why are we the only two awake?' he asked, easing forward to lower himself off the cryo bed.

Raven automatically reached out to steady him, but he shook off her hand, he might have been shot – twice – but he wasn't dying, he didn't need her help to stand.

'Mechanical malfunction,' Raven explained, 'woke me up two days ago.'

'Are we all going to die?' he asked conversationally, moving to the storage locker beside his cryo pod so he could start to get dressed.

'Nah,' Raven assured him in that easy tone that suggested there was nothing she couldn't handle, 'but there is a problem.'

'Of course, there is,' Murphy muttered. He managed to tug his pants on but bending down to do up his boots had him wincing. With a careless shrug he left them untied, exchanging the Eligius t-shirt for his own. He had a knife too and although Raven wanted to tell him he wouldn't need it, she didn't. Far be it for her to tell him how to survive. He'd rescued her more than once, she had to give his survival instincts the props they deserved.

She figured she'd hit him with it all at once. 'We've been asleep for a hundred and twenty-three years,' she told him bluntly. 'Earth wasn't an option.'

He blinked at her and she could see as the words hit him, wheels turning as he tried to work out what that meant for them. 'I thought you said we weren't going to die?'

'Monty cracked the Eigius III files.'

'Monty,' Murphy repeated, incredulously. 'Raven even you couldn't break into those files.'

'It took him thirty years,' she told him, feeling a hint of pride that he was sceptical anyone could get into those files when she couldn't.

'What?' Murphy's voice was blank as he failed to make sense of that.

'Come on,' she urged, gesturing him to follow her. 'There's a video explaining everything.'

Later, when the video was done playing, Murphy managed to be offended that the instructions Monty left for his son were to wake Bellamy and Clarke first. Raven felt a smile lifting the corners of her mouth as they went in search of the cryo bed where Jordan Jasper Greene slept. Trust Murphy to be annoyed about that.

'Why'd you wake me up anyway?' he asked as they searched along the banks of beds. 'Why didn't you just go back to sleep?'

'I can't,' she told him. 'That malfunction? I had to patch together a fix but it needs cleaning and resetting every twenty-seven hours or it'll just blow again and then we'll all be screwed.'

'Great. So why wake me?'

Raven shrugged, not willing to voice the reasons she'd chosen him, at least not just yet. Murphy might have pushed the issue, but they'd finally found Jordan's pod. He was occupying the one Monty was meant to take more than a century ago. It was hard to tell through the ice crystals covering the inside of the glass but Raven thought he looked like a perfect mix of his parents. They'd have to wait two years to learn if he really did have Harper's kindness and Monty's mind.

It was going to be a long wait.

**Day 17**

It was her turn on maintenance duty. It might have been the only thing standing between them and the destruction of the last of humanity, but it wasn't all that hard to fix and she'd dragged Murphy along the first two times and taught him how to do it. Just in case something ever happened to her. He'd been reluctant at first but he'd followed her instructions perfectly, surprising her with his competence. He'd always been so reluctant to learn anything on the Ring, refusing to do anything that might make him useful that she'd almost forgotten how capable he was when he put his mind to it.

Recognising telling him that would only make him reluctant to help in the future, Raven refrained from making a snarky comment about teaching an old dog new tricks. Barely. She'd gone with him the next time their twenty-seven hours were up, but she'd only stood there and watched as he quickly and competently changed out the filter with the clean one she'd taken out the last time. She hadn't bothered the next time his turn came up.

But now that she was done, she went in search of him. She hadn't seen him in quite a few hours and before that, they'd only really crossed paths when she went into the mess in search of food and he was coming out, crunching away on one of the last few ration packs left over from the original Eligius IV mission. Knowing how much he hated eating the algae, she'd left those for him.

Now, she was feeling kind of restless and she knew he was healed up enough that she didn't mind beating the hell out of him.

He didn't know it yet, but Murphy was about to get that training Bellamy had been after him to get for years.

'No,' he told her, not even bothering to look up from the book he was reading. She'd found him on the bridge, sitting sideways in the captain's chair with his legs draped carelessly over the arms.

He turned a page of the book and she rolled her eyes. She moved toward him and snatched the book out of his hands, glancing carelessly at the cover as she tossed it aside. He was reading the _Iliad_ she realised with a twinge of fondness. She supposed it reminded him of Bellamy. She had no idea where he'd found it but it didn't matter, he wouldn't be reading it any more today.

'I've been trapped on this ship for nineteen days, Murphy, and before that I was held prisoner by Diyoza,' she snapped, not that he needed the reminder. 'I need to move.'

'So move,' he told her. 'It's not like this ship is small.' He made shooing motions with his hands. 'Go for a walk.'

She wanted to snarl, definitely regretted tossing the book aside because she'd have loved to hit him with it, but instead she took a deep breath and said as calmly as she could, 'Murphy, training with Echo helped ease the pain in my leg and hips. The movement helped.'

For a moment he didn't say anything, then he swung his legs to the floor and grumbled, 'Guess we're training then.'

She waited until he was following her off the bridge before she grinned and said, 'Sucker.'

She knew she had him, though, when he didn't tell her to fuck off and disappear into the depths of the ship, just huffed a laugh of respect for successfully playing him.

**Day 39**

Murphy found her standing over Shaw's cryo pod. It wasn't unusual for him to come looking for her but this was the first time he'd ventured into the cryo chamber while she was in there. Neither of them had made a habit of visiting their friends, in fact Raven hadn't been in there since they'd gone looking for Jordan. As far as she knew, Murphy hadn't set foot in there since then, either.

She wasn't even sure what had driven her to come in this time. Well, okay, that was a lie, she knew exactly why she'd come looking for the frozen pilot and it had to do with the fact that she hadn't had sex in six years even before they went into their one hundred and twenty three year sleep and she'd been having a particularly steamy dream before she woke up and so naturally she'd drifted into the cryo chamber to look down at Shaw and ponder a few choices she'd made.

Because it had never even occurred to her to wake him up. She'd been facing down two years alone on Eligius IV and it hadn't even occurred to her to wake up the guy she was attracted to and had kind of maybe started something with before they all went to sleep.

She hadn't been dreaming about him though. Honestly, she hadn't really thought about him much at all and she wondered if that said something about her or if maybe there were things about the decision she'd made those last few days (weeks?) before the world ended (for good this time) that she was finally taking the time to analyse.

Like why she'd found it so easy to kiss a man who had been torturing her just days before.

'You didn't wake him,' Murphy observed, coming to stand beside her to look down at Shaw.

'I don't know him,' she answered honestly. He wouldn't be her first choice to confide in but he was far from the last, they'd grown closer on the Ring, in their short time aboard Eligius IV the first time, and now she thought that in the weeks they'd been alone together with the rest of humanity sleeping, that he was – terrifying though the thought might be – actually her best friend, possibly had been for a while.

He didn't respond straight away, in fact he took so long to reply she didn't think he was going to say anything at all but then he confided, 'Sometimes I think Emori only likes me when we're on the ground.'

'Emori loves you,' Raven assured him. Half the reason she'd been so cranky those six months she'd been rooming with Emori was because as much as her friend made like she loathed Murphy, she also managed to do it in a way that convinced Raven even more that she still loved him.

'She does,' he agreed, and Raven chanced to look up at him and see the thoughtful and somewhat sad expression on his face. 'After we blew up McCreary, she told me she wanted to screw me right then and then.' He gave a soft laugh. 'If McCreary had waited just two more minutes I'm sure he'd have captured us for real.' He smiled wryly at her. 'The thing is, it didn't mean we're back together, just adrenalin, you know, the thrill of the situation.'

'You looked pretty together to me before we went to sleep.'

Murphy shrugged. 'It's easier to fall back on being with her than it is to think maybe we shouldn't.'

Raven kind of got that and it made it easier for her to admit, 'I think I liked Shaw because he was the first person who looked at me that way. He was the first person in six years there was a chance I could have sex with.'

Murphy grinned. 'All you had to do was ask, Reyes.'

He walked away before she could tell if he was joking.

**Day 68**

She was going to kill him. Honestly, she was surprised it took so long. Sixty-eight days alone together without more than a fleeting murderous thought was sixty-seven days longer than she'd predicted they'd make. But she guessed they'd had a good thing going and if she murdered him, then at least she'd have an excuse to go wake up someone else.

It was just. He was so damn _Murphy _and it wasn't like he'd done anything particularly annoying or worth being killed over he was just _there_.

Shirtless. With muscles and abs she didn't even know he had and her dry spell was reaching a record breaking length of time and logically she knew she was just sex starved and he was a reasonably attractive guy and quite literally her only option but she wasn't about to have sex with John fucking Murphy out of sheer desperate horniness.

She's survived six years and seven days on the Ring. She could do another two and then she'd just wake Shaw up and have her way with him and it would be fine.

Sure, that would open up its own can of awkward worms because seventy days was long enough to know that she truly didn't know Shaw and the tension she'd felt between them could honestly have been the result of both of them experiencing space induced dry spells followed immediately by a lot of life and death situations but anything was better than the levels of crazy she'd have to reach before she had sex with Murphy.

'You're staring,' he pointed out, slightly breathless as he finished another round of sit-ups. Guess she really shouldn't have been surprised by the abs given how little there was to do stranded in space and how easily Murphy used physical exercise to wear himself out. Her fault, but it kind of took her by surprise all the same.

And those abs were absolutely to blame for the words that fell out of her mouth. 'I'm horny. You're not helping.'

He paused mid crunch, abs curling in a way she absolutely did not zero in on and she could practically hear the smirk in his voice as he drawled, 'Really?'

And, thank god, his smugness was like a dose of ice-cold water because she suddenly looked at him, nose wrinkled and said with genuine relief, 'And I'm over it.'

He went back to his sit-ups; she went back tinkering with her leg brace (always making improvements) and if there was a new tension in the air, she was determined to ignore it.

**Day 73**

She couldn't say what triggered them. Maybe it was that they were finally able to relax, maybe it was that being alone with Murphy allowed her to drop her guard, either way, the nightmares were sudden and left her gasping for breath, heart pounding as she tried to make sense of her surroundings. Sometimes when her heart stopped racing and her breathing evened out, she found herself curled up in the corner of the room she'd taken for herself, not sure how she'd managed to scramble across the room without her leg brace.

Once or twice, Murphy woke her. He never made a thing of it, both times it had happened when he'd been passing her room on his way to switch out the filter and it had happened far enough apart that he didn't pay much attention. They all got nightmares, after what they'd been through it would be surprising if they didn't.

Still, after five nights in a row she was starting to feel the lack of sleep. That was her excuse for her next actions.

Murphy had claimed the captain's quarters for his own. Not, as he'd originally declared, because of the massive bed, but because of the small library. He woke when she opened the door, pushing up onto his elbows to frown at her as she closed the door behind her and made her way in the dim light to the bed. He didn't say anything when she sat down or when she started to take off her brace.

He didn't even complain when she demanded he move over to make room for her in the bed. 'You better not steal the covers,' she hissed at him as she snuggled into the bed that she had to admit was amazingly comfortable.

'Is this you finally admitting you haven't been sleeping?' he casually asked her, voice thick with sleep. He rolled onto his side to wrap an arm around her waist and drew her close.

His breath was warm against her neck and it should have been weird or uncomfortable being so close to him but in the months since she'd conned him into training with her she'd spent a good amount of time pressed up close to him.

Besides, she was too fucking tired to even pretend this was anything more than what it was just to maintain their snarky status quo.

'Shut up.'

**Day 99**

He might have been reluctant to train but he picked things up fast. The first days she'd had him on the mats faster than he probably liked but not nearly as fast as she'd been expecting. She supposed being good at staying alive meant you picked up a thing or two. Two months in and he was truly starting to give her a run for her money which was how they ended up tangled on the mat, legs twisted as she pinned him, arms tangled from when he'd managed to reverse her hold.

They were breathing heavy, Murphy (shirtless damn him) lay sweaty beneath her, the rise and fall of her chest matching his. Which she could feel because she was pinned so close to him.

That tension she'd been resolutely ignoring flared between them until the flush of her skin had little to do with the physical exertion of their sparring and everything to do with the fact that he was half naked and pressed against her.

And that he didn't seem inclined to let her go any time soon. She wasn't complaining. She did kind of slide sideways until she was lying on the mat beside him although their legs remained tangled together.

There was a reluctant comfort in lying close beside him, one that she usually ignored while they were awake but took full advantage of at night when the nightmares woke her up. Or when she fell asleep watching an old vid on the screen she'd repaired in the captain's quarters.

Or when they wound up arguing and she just followed him into his room to have the last word and ended up staying because, really, he had the best bed and she'd had to adjust the circadian cycle to preserve power and so the temperature during the night cycle was quite low now and sharing the bed just conserved heat.

And come to think of it, she didn't remember the last time she'd slept alone.

But she wasn't thinking about that.

Murphy took one of her hands in his and started inspecting her fingers. 'This finally healed?' he asked softly, tugging gently on the two fingers she'd nearly cut off while tinkering in her work shop two weeks ago.

If she hadn't been wearing gloves, she probably would have lost the fingers. As it was, she'd managed to slice pretty deep, so deep Murphy had to stitch her up. He'd made surprisingly neat stitches which of course she'd teased him about. He'd gone all quiet and just when she thought he was going to sulk off in a mood, he told her about his mother and how she'd been teaching him to repair his own clothes before things got bad.

She couldn't be sure, but outside of Abby, she thought she might be the only one left who knew the true story of Murphy's childhood. She knew he'd never told Emori all of it, not because he didn't want her to know, but because compared to the shit she'd been through, his childhood was almost easy.

Raven could relate.

She hummed an affirmative to his question, but he didn't stop playing with her fingers and she thought if he kept that up she might fall asleep, she was so relaxed.

And she must have because when she next opened her eyes she was in bed. Murphy's bed. She had vague memories of being carried, of making a token protest about being able to walk. She liked that it was his bed she was waking up in, wondered if it even occurred to him to take her back to her own.

**Day 111**

He'd just wiped the floor with her at yet another soccer match and the grin on his face was easy and real and she couldn't have said what it was about that moment that struck her so deeply but they were walking side by side to the mess for (what passed for) lunch and she found herself telling him about Sinclair and Becca in the lab right before she took the ice bath.

'It's weird,' she concluded, 'but I'm so glad my brain was turning to sludge because I got to see him again, you know? For so long he was the only family I had.'

'I wouldn't have left, you know,' Murphy told her after a moment of quiet, mulling over her words. 'If you'd realised sooner that you could save yourself, I'd have stayed. Sent Emori to Polis without me.'

Raven shook her head. 'If you'd stayed, you would have pumped me full of the meds Abby left and I'd never have gotten to the point where I was hallucinating Sinclair. And that saved my life.'

They walked the rest of the way to the mess in comfortable silence. They'd been opening up more and more to each other, not like they were trusting each other more because she could admit she'd trusted Murphy a lot longer than she probably should have – she'd certainly taken advantage of the fact that he trusted her enough in the past. No, for Raven she just found herself wanting to share things with him, wanting someone to know all the little things about her life that she'd never shared with anyone.

Not since Finn.

Before Sinclair, Finn had been her only real family and after Finn died she'd thrown herself into her work, into saving the rest of their people and Sinclair had supported her through all of that. She missed him, missed having someone who would look out for her, who didn't put up with her shit and encouraged her at the same time, who could teach her the things she had left to learn.

On the Ring, she'd made herself a new family. The seven of them stranded alone had learned to love and care for each other just like any real family would and it helped fill the void. Helped ease the ache of knowing she was the awkward seventh wheel most of the time even before Bellamy stopped hating Echo (because they'd all secretly agreed he'd stopped hating her long before he'd admitted it).

The soft incessant beeping of the maintenance alarm sounded from Murphy's wrist. Raven had found the old watch amongst the broken personal effects of the Eligius' original crew and fixed it up to help them keep track of the twenty-seven-hour maintenance schedule. Murphy silenced the alarm, put down his now empty glass of water on the benchtop behind him and slipped the watch from his wrist, trading it to Raven for her to wear until the countdown next ended.

He started to leave but doubled back before he'd taken more than half a dozen steps. He reached out to loop an arm around her neck and dragged her close, pressing a kiss to her slightly sweaty hairline. 'You know you've still got family, right?'

She grimaced, she wasn't the only one sweaty, and shoved him away. 'I think you're going soft.'

He rolled his eyes and walked away but he stopped when she called out to him, looking back at her over his shoulder quizzically.

'Thanks.'

**Day 131**

She couldn't have said what woke her, she only knew that one minute she'd been deep asleep and the next she was staring at the ceiling of their room wide awake and alert. Murphy was deep asleep next to her, sprawled on his stomach, face pressed into his pillow and hugging it like he sometimes hugged her when he got needy (and handsy – she didn't mind, not that she'd be telling him that) in his sleep. He wasn't showing any signs of a nightmare that might have woken her and for a moment she considered she might have been dreaming something that had forced her awake, although if that was the case, she didn't remember any of it now.

Disoriented, she tried to go back to sleep but couldn't. She felt restless, fidgety, a nagging sensation like she'd forgotten something tugging at the back of her mind. Just to be sure, she reached over to check the display on the maintenance timer, but they still had another ten hours before they needed to switch out and clean the filter.

She shook her head and settled back onto the mattress, obviously, she'd been dreaming something that had her a little fuzzy. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply.

Her eyes shot open again and she sniffed tentatively at the air. She was used to the clean if somewhat stale smell and taste of the recycled air on the ship. That didn't mean she didn't miss the clean and crisp air on Earth but right now there was something in the smell and taste of the air that wasn't right.

Raven pushed herself into a sitting position, shoving the pillow up against the bulkhead that served as their headboard, waved her hand over the light beside the bed to activate its dim night cycle glow and reached for the tablet she'd left on the nightstand. It had taken her a while to get it working just how she liked but now she could do most of the diagnostics for the ship on there from wherever she happened to be when she wanted to take a poke around.

The quick poke around she did now did nothing to reassure her she was imagining the slightly sour smell to the air. She reached over and smacked Murphy on the back of the shoulder. Rather than wake up, he grumbled something unintelligible and snuggled deeper into his pillow.

'Wake up, idiot,' she said, smacking him again, a little harder this time.

'Fuck off,' he snapped at her, his words muffled by the pillow and sleep.

'Something's wrong with the air filtration and I think we're breathing poison,' she hissed at him, yanking his pillow out of his grip to hit him with it.

He rolled over and sat up abruptly, her words finally forcing their way through his sleep muddled brain. 'I'm up.'

'Brace. Shoes. Maintenance shaft off 9B,' she ordered.

He didn't hesitate to scramble off the bed (over her), snatched up her brace and helped her quickly snap the buckles and straps into place before he tossed her boots her way and jammed his feet into his own. He looked around for a shirt while she did up her boots but gave up when he failed to find one. She was wearing the one he'd taken off the night before – they really needed to do some laundry.

As they scrambled toward the air filtration system that was leaching something toxic back into their breathable air, Raven spared a moment to think what they must look like. Stumbling out of the same bed, half dressed, Murphy in sleep pants and unlaced boots, her in her underwear and his t-shirt. If anyone happened to be looking (and not, you know sleeping the deep sleep of the frozen) they might mistake them for a couple.

Thank god there were more important things to be worrying about than the fact that she and Murphy were in more of a relationship than she'd had those last months with Finn.

**Day 136**

They were playing an old Grounder card game Emori and Echo taught them on the Ring. They were both terrible at it but without anyone else around it didn't much matter. Raven had been on the bridge when Murphy came looking for her and so now they were seated in front of the big window looking out onto the vast nothingness that had been their constant view since they woke, trying to pretend they had any idea what they were doing.

In more ways than one.

But Raven had finally had enough. Giving up on the card game, she threw her (admittedly) terrible hand down onto the floor between them, scattering cards on impact and got to her feet. Which no matter how long she'd been dealing with her leg and brace would always be ungraceful but in that moment it felt kind of appropriate. Because she was done dancing around this whole stupid thing and Murphy couldn't give two fucks what she looked like pushing herself to her feet and she didn't care if he cared because it was Murphy for fucks sake and he was looking up at her with an amused frown, no doubt with a smart remark about her being a sore loser at the ready, but she cut him off by yanking her shirt over her head.

'You and I are going to have sex,' she declared.

Murphy dropped his cards and shot to his feet, hands reaching for the hem of his own t-shirt. 'I can't believe you broke first,' he said, all smug grin.

'Shut up and take off your clothes.'

'Fucking finally.'

'Stop talking.' But she said it with a grin.

**Day 205**

'I finally finished going through the rest of the Eligius III files,' Raven told him over breakfast. 'There were a couple Monty didn't crack.'

Murphy, sitting across the table from her with his chin resting on his crossed arms, was staring at the glass of algae "smoothie" as though he could make it something delicious through the power of his thoughts alone. He made an interested sound in the back of his throat to let her know he was listening even while daydreaming about real food that came with flavour and texture and not just the vaguely slimy feeling the "smoothies" they'd resorted to making left behind.

'There's nothing in the files at all to suggest the crew died violent and horrific deaths.'

Murphy snorted.

Raven ignored him and went on, 'At least Eligius III was manned by scientists and not criminals.'

Murphy, who had as much disdain for certain scientists as he did for some of the criminals they had sleeping away in cryo, looked up at her with raised eyebrows. 'Should we be hoping they're alive or dead?'

'I don't know,' Raven sighed. 'If they're alive, if they're thriving with a whole new society, we could have another Grounder situation on our hands. If they're dead…'

'…then we have to hope it was from natural causes or a murderous rampage and not environmental,' he finished for her. When she gave him a surprised look, he rolled his eyes. 'Sometimes I actually listen to what you're saying.'

'That's funny, I just thought you pictured me naked.'

'What, you think I can't do both at once?' He smirked. 'I'm excellent at multi-tasking.'

**Day 367**

He'd done something typically Murphy, she'd snapped something back. There'd been screaming, the occasional object thrown, some more yelling, Raven couldn't even remember what the hell they'd been fighting about but holy fuck, had it been worth it.

Sprawled naked in bed, Raven slumped forward over Murphy, face pressed into the crook of his neck as her knees gave way and her strength gave out. He let out a groan that was far from pained and she wiggled her hips slightly. He was still inside her, the sweet ache she was feeling a pleasant reminder that Murphy knew exactly what he was doing and there was a good chance she wouldn't be able to walk for days.

Breathing still ragged, she pressed a kiss to his chest just as his stomach rumbled. She couldn't be sure, but she thought they'd been at this angry sex turned crazy-fucking-hot make-up sex thing for a good four or five hours.

She didn't want to get up, wasn't sure she could, and it wasn't like algae held any kind of appeal over more sex.

But food was required.

Murphy moved beneath her and she reconsidered her need for food.

**Day 400**

With as little as there was to occupy their time on the ship, Raven still felt the days slipping away. They'd fallen into something of a routine to try and keep things as normal as possible, working to maintain a day and night cycle, keep up with their training and physical exercise (other than sex) and a bunch of stupid little things to help them fill their days.

Murphy had already read every book he'd found in their quarters and was working his way through the much more expansive (although not nearly as good) selection of donated books for the inmates. Raven had taught herself how to fly both the ship and the transport ship using the onboard simulator and then (out of boredom and a ruthless curiosity) taught Murphy (he wasn't great, but he could fly them if he had to).

They spent days talking to each other in Trigedasleng and others not talking at all (not always for fun reasons, they were Raven and Murphy and both horribly stubborn after all). They found ways to occupy their time, searching every inch of the ship for things to do or (in Raven's case) fix (sometimes break).

But there were days where neither of them could bring themselves to do any of the things that might kill time and boredom got the best of them.

It would have been nice to ring in the nice round number of four hundred days down (three hundred and thirty two to go) with something like enthusiasm but she wasn't feeling it, Murphy was feeding off her mood making him cranky (well crankier than normal) and even sex didn't really hold any appeal right then and there.

The fact they were in horrible moods all day and both decided to go to bed early wasn't a new occurrence but this time, while she was stripping off her pants and stealing another of Murphy's t-shirts to sleep in (she liked to wear the one he'd been wearing all day for reasons she'd tried to explain to him once but had given up when he'd looked at her like she was crazy), it struck her.

For a moment, she got a little side tracked being horrified but then she resigned herself to the realisation that actually, all things considered, it wasn't such a bad thing.

That didn't mean, when she crawled in next to him and wrapped herself around him, that she didn't sound a little disturbed when she told him, 'I think I fucking love you.'

Murphy, rather than being stunned, horrified or making a mushy and romantic gesture in return, laughed.

She smacked his chest and shoved him away so she could roll over and turn her back to him. He didn't let her get very far, pressing up close behind her and wrapping an arm around her. His hand snuck up under her t-shirt to press against her stomach. He pressed a kiss to the back of her neck, and she shoved her elbow back into his stomach in response. Not hard, she'd definitely hit him harder during training on the mats, but hard enough to let him know she wasn't happy with him and was now regretting saying anything at all.

'I love you too,' he murmured into her skin, placing soft kisses along her bare shoulder where the t-shirt had slipped.

'God, you're such a dick.' There was no heat in her words, just a stupid soft smile.

**Day 696**

They were so close; she could feel it. Thirty-eight days to go until Monty's automatic protocols were set to wake Jordan. Just thirty-eight more days until he'd wake Bellamy and Clarke. Thirty-eight days until the view out their window changed to a new planet and not just endless black and distant stars.

Thirty-eight days until both of them had to have some really awkward conversations with people who didn't realise anything had changed.

'Emori's going to hate me,' Raven grumbled, dumping another load of fresh laundry onto one of the huge tables in the mess. 'I feel like we betrayed her.'

Murphy, who felt guilty enough, was trying to be practical about the whole thing. As though that would somehow make their relationship easier for his ex to swallow. The ex who didn't even know she was an ex, at least not really. Despite what Murphy had told her (multiple tines) long before they'd started sleeping together, Raven couldn't help feeling like she'd done something wrong.

'Hey,' he reached out to grab her hand and pulled her close to stand between his legs. 'Emori and I were done six months before we left the Ring. We both knew it. One crazy hot kiss after we blew up McCreary isn't a relationship.'

Raven rolled her eyes at his description of the kiss he and Emori had shared that day in the woods but she couldn't really argue. They might have been friendlier those days before they went to sleep but Raven didn't remember any sign they were back together.

'I know. I just wish things were clearer between you two before we all went to sleep.'

Murphy shrugged. 'We didn't plan this,' he pointed out. 'I mean, you could have woken anyone else up, but it is what it is.' He released her so they could go back to sorting through their laundry and his tone was teasing when he said, 'But if Shaw tries anything I might just shoot him.'

Shaw, Raven knew, wouldn't be much of a problem. One kiss and a couple dopey looks weren't about to compare to a year-long relationship and almost a decade of friendship.

**Day 729**

'Do I even want to know what you're doing?' she hadn't thought much of waking up alone. They'd been sleeping together (and beside each other) for years, long enough that wondering where he was in the morning was second nature but she didn't always search him out first thing. That didn't mean she'd expected to find him in the armoury methodically stripping down and cleaning each and every one of the guns they had locked up in storage.

He didn't look up from his work as he explained he was making sure they were all in working condition given they hadn't been used in more than a century and there was a good chance in the next few days they'd be needed.

Seeing the sense in what he was saying, she sank down onto the bench beside him and picked up one of the rifles. She was kind of antsy now they were so close, it would give her something to do to take her mind off what was coming.

**Day 731**

'I love you,' Raven informed him, 'but I cannot wait to talk to someone who isn't you.'

Murphy huffed out a laughed against her skin, leaving a hot trail of kisses from her hip all the way up her neck and along her jaw until he captured her lips with his own. 'I'm kind of looking forward to kicking Bellamy's ass,' he murmured against her lips.

This time, Raven laughed. The timer on the watch went off and she grumbled in annoyance. Still, she took off the watch, reset the timer and gave it to Murphy who rolled off her with his own annoyed grunt. Neither willing to ignore the alarm. There was no sense in killing them all now when they were so close.

'Don't move,' she ordered him.

Murphy drew a cross over his heart with his finger and flopped back onto the mattress. This would be their last day alone on the ship and so naturally they'd chosen to spend it in bed. There was no saying how much time, if any, they'd have once everyone else woke up and they started having to make plans for this new planet Monty had found.

They'd find time, she knew that, neither she knew Murphy were about to give up sex just because they had no idea what might be waiting for them down on this new planet. She was quite enjoying this end to her dry spell; she wasn't about to let a little thing like the fate of humanity stand in the way of her fun.

Murphy was exactly where she'd left him when she returned which had her grinning.

**Day 732/Day 1**

Raven and Murphy stood side by side at the end of Jordan's cryo pod watching the wake-up cycle kick in on auto. The nerves she was feeling about meeting the son Monty and Harper had loved enough to let go, were far outweighed by the excitement of having other people to talk to. Much as she loved Murphy, she really was starved for interaction with other people. Two years was long enough that she thought she knew everything there was to know about John Murphy, just like he now knew everything there was to know about Raven Reyes, and she liked to think they'd known each other pretty well before.

She couldn't wait to talk to someone else, couldn't help admiring Monty and Harper for surviving alone together for _decades _because even she could admit after decades alone together, she might very well murder Murphy just for a change of pace.

The opening of the cryo pod interrupted her thoughts on just how she might murder the love of her life (and ugh why were her inner thoughts about Murphy so mushy?) and she found herself locking eyes with Jordan.

'Hi,' she greeted with a smile.

'Hello,' Jordan returned grinning widely and the smile was so very Monty that Raven felt her heart ache. 'You're not supposed to be awake.'

'There was a malfunction in one of the filter's that feeds into the cryo pods,' Raven explained. 'We've been awake for a while.'

Jordan scrambled out of the pod, face practically split in half by his wide grin. 'Wow! You're Murphy!'

Murphy smirked and Raven rolled her eyes. 'Just wait until you get to know him, he won't be your favourite for long.'

'Hey!' Murphy protested. 'I'm awesome and you know it.'

'You keep telling yourself that,' Raven murmured.

'Wow!' Jordan said again. 'I can't believe I'm finally meeting you.'

'You should get dressed,' Raven suggested. 'We know you're supposed to wake up Bellamy and Clarke first. We'll be waiting in the mess.'

'You don't want to come with me?' Jordan asked and he sounded so disappointed that he wouldn't get to talk to them more right then and there.

Raven shook her head. 'They'll need a moment alone.'

She and Murphy got bored waiting on Bellamy and Clarke after about ten minutes. They both knew how long the video message from Monty was, gauged how long it would take Jordan to wake up their friends, factored in how pathetic Bellamy and Clarke could get around each other and figured they'd probably need to go interrupt the pair of them standing teary eyed looking out of the bridge windows down onto their new planet.

They were right. They bumped into Jordan as they were coming up on the bridge and he gave them a smile only slightly dimmer than the one he'd had earlier. Raven realised it had probably hit him hard seeing his father talk about the life he was gifting his friends and son and about the day he lost Harper. Raven gave him a quick hug, squeezing him tight before she released him and gave him a gentle push in the direction of the mess.

'We won't be long,' she assured him.

'Yeah,' Murphy agreed, 'we'll pry those two away from the window and get this thing rolling.'

Raven smiled at him fondly. 'It's not obvious how desperately you want to get down there at all.'

'Like you're not itching to breath something other than recycled air.'

Raven moaned appreciatively at the thought. She could still remember the first steps she took on Earth. Still remember the feeling of awe as she breathed in fresh air and touched the plants. 'God yes.'

Moments later she wasn't feeling as fond of Murphy as she smacked him upside the head. His, 'Well isn't this touching,' deserved it.

Bellamy and Clarke had been standing in front of the large window (as predicted) and they were staring teary eyed down at the planet (wrapped in each other's arm) until Murphy's unapologetic snark startled them.

She wouldn't hold it against him, though.


End file.
